July 5th, 2008
Tachibana was kidnapped as a child and forcefed cake (apparently); although he doesn’t remember much about the kidnapping, this appears to have something to do with him quitting his prestigious business job and deciding to open a bakery. The first man he interviews to work for him, however, is Ono, a young man who came out to him in high school - although Ono appears not to remember, Tachibana rejected him fairly homophobically. Ono has, however, grown up to become not only an excellent patissiere but, in his own words, “a gay of demonic charm” - any man he takes even a slight interest in, straight or gay, falls completely and utterly in love with him, to the extent that Ono hasn’t been able to hold down a job as he’s been driven out by obsessive would-be lovers.
Tachibana strangely seems immune to this, so Ono takes him to Shinjuku’s gay district in an attempt to prove that Ono can’t work for him without them falling in love. The continued failure of Ono’s machinations drives Tachibana to remind him of their past in an attempt to stop him, which appears to work; however, Ono knew all along exactly who Tachibana was, which brings his motivation into question. And what of the young would-be boxer whose name I can’t remember that has to quit because he has detached retinas, and is obviously also going to get hired at the bakery?
This show feels MUCH more at home in the Noitamina slot than Toshokan Sensou did. Although Toshokan Sensou (which I really should catch up on now it’s finished) was still good, it didn’t really feel very different from most other anime out there, which is the whole point of Noitamina - to appeal to people who don’t watch anime. Antique Bakery is squarely aimed at the kind of women who watch dramas and probably read manga but don’t watch anime - the art style deliberately evokes manga cover art, with characters drawn in thin lines and a generally pale colour scheme throughout (although the somewhat surprising CG backgrounds don’t necessarily fit the aesthetic all the time), and the story itself is all kinds of melodramatic.
Obviously it’s not going to appeal to a lot of the fansub crowd - the mere mention of male homosexuality will send most fanboys running for cover, after all - and I wasn’t convinced when the episode began with the slightly bizarre kidnapping-and-cake flashback. However, the writing for this show is surprisingly funny - Ono’s gay appeal is amusing without being over the top - without skimping on dramatic impact or plausibility. It’s no great shakes for an animation buff or anything (the CG cat might elicit some groans) but the OP with its cardboard cutout characters and the ED’s collapsing jigsaw pieces are pretty entertaining.
I’d ask you all to give Antique Bakery a try if you’re not a “Yaoi = TEH NO” type. Sure, it’s kind of silly, but I had a lot of fun here that I wasn’t really expecting to have, and I think it’s going to be a fun little series.
And if you ARE a yaoi-hater, then it’s only 13 episodes long and then we get Nodame Cantabile season 2, so everyone should be happy!
Posted in Currently Watching | No Comments »
July 5th, 2008
Sora Suzuki, a 16 year old girl who lives in Biei in Hokkaido, discovers via her mum that she’s going to mage school in Tokyo to study with a man named Seiichirou Hara. Before she leaves, though, she helps her best friend Michiru confess her love to a guy by using her magic to evoke the times that they’ll never get to share as he transfers away from Hokkaido.
Well, that was an easy plot summary, because virtually nothing really happens in this first episode of the latest part of the Mahou Tsukai ni blahblahblah franchise, which is also getting a live action film at some point this year. I liked the first anime series rather more than I expected (I suppose Jeff remembers blogging it, too…); I’m not much of a one for slice-of-life anime but Yume Kikuchi’s life was pretty interesting. I think it’s too early to tell about Sora’s little story as this entire episode is essentially a prologue, so all it’s got to go on are first impressions.
Which are pretty positive, thankfully. I’m not normally a fan of Osamu Kobayashi’s disjointed realist style of animation, and I felt it didn’t really suit his last major project, Paradise Kiss. Whether he’s just been kept on a tighter leash than normal by his producers I don’t know, but somehow the best parts of his style - the photorealistic backgrounds and the nuance of the character movement - combine here with much more natural pacing and a really excellent evocation of atmosphere. The sun-drenched landscapes of Biei make me feel slightly wistful (even though I’m not really a countryside person!) and the music only adds to the rural feel. My only slight complaint is the very short scene where Sora actually uses her magic; I always loved watching Yume “do her thing” in the first series and I’d have liked it to have been slightly flashier here, as it would have made an interesting contrast to the almost mundane atmosphere of the rest of the show, but we’ll have to see how it’s handled later in the series.
Natsu no Sora has turned out pretty much liked I hoped it would - it’s not a particularly big surprise given that the trailer shown at TAF this year made it quite obvious what kind of show this was going to be, but it’s nice for one’s expectations to be met occasionally rather than horribly dashed. Sign me up for more!
Posted in Currently Watching | No Comments »
June 29th, 2008
This show continues to leave me terribly confused, and not in a Kara no Kyoukai “this dialogue makes absolutely no sense whatsoever” way. I just find Miharu so utterly enigmatic - I have no idea what he wants or why he does the things he does. At least Yoite, King of Emo, sort of makes sense from what he reveals in this episode, even if I don’t agree with him - his dilemma is that his evil forbidden art uses up his lifeforce and he thinks he’s worthless, so he wants Miharu to erase him completely from existence so that he’d never have had such an awful life or something along those lines. Why doesn’t he just stop killing people or using his technique? It would be much less stressful and no-one’s ever really beyond redemption in Anime Land.
Miharu, on the other hand, just seems to do whatever you don’t expect him to do. Aside from the fact that if he kills Yoite almost everyone in the world ever will die (which I suppose is a decent enough reason) I don’t see why he doesn’t just Shinra Banshou all that away to a happy ending. Surely it’s powerful enough that Miharu could just will it out of existence in some kind of recursive suicidal doohickey or something? I don’t know, this show confuses me, it’s pretty and mildly intelligent and I shouldn’t think about it any further than that or I’ll give myself a headache.
Posted in Nabari no Ou | 3 Comments »
June 29th, 2008
Flashback time, y’all. We return to Shiki and Mikiya’s high school days, when Shiki was a schizophrenic serial killer and Mikiya was…well, the same as ever, really. This film in a nutshell is Shiki killing some people to stop them exposing that she’s schizophrenic, and Mikiya not believing it’s her until she tries to kill him.
Whilst this film is significantly less pretentious than the first part and much clearer about what’s going on, it’s significantly more boooooring. For all of the fancy playing around with chronology Kara no Kyoukai’s been doing it still can’t disguise the rather flimsy storytelling - this part feels extremely padded, with endless slightly cryptic conversations that mostly say the same things over and over again.
It also reiterates how phenomenally stupid Mikiya is. I can get that he’s blinded by love or whatever so that he thinks that Shiki can’t be behind the murders, but when she repeatedly tells him that she (or rather her “male” personality) is the killer he just point-blank refuses to believe her for no real reason. It doesn’t help that the story tries and fails to present Shiki’s precarious psychological state as being something more supernatural; she’s just a homicidal maniac, really, and it’s hard to really get behind a character as cold and messed up as she is.
The same positives from the first episode apply here - it looks beautiful, the acting’s great, Kajiura plops more of her atmospheric identikit compositions in at the right times. The animation isn’t as interesting (there’s a lot of Mikiya running like a spazz, but it’s not particularly exciting), but I suppose with the director changing every episode we’re always going to get a slightly different atmosphere.
I will, of course, still watch the third movie, because I want to see what the point of this whole thing is (and the trailer makes it look good, which is probably bollocks but we’ll have to wait and see). Maybe it all works better as a book, I don’t know.
Posted in Kara no Kyoukai | 2 Comments »
June 21st, 2008
My faith was rewarded - Monochrome Factor is back to being entertainingly naff again!
Kengo gets all huffy because Akira doesn’t want him in on the kokuchi fights. This apparently means there is hidden darkness in him, which Nanaya (the evil guy who’s been unleashing the kokuchi) takes advantage of by seeding him three of the evil worms, so obviously Akira, Shirogane and Aya all have to fight him.
Kengo, however, is useless, as is emphasised throughout the episode and all previous ones. He’s a tag-along - Akira flashes back to when Kengo used to get horribly beat up and STILL join him in all his fights, and I think we’re supposed to think he’s admirable for being Akira’s true friend. This doesn’t alter the fact that he’s crap in a fight and something of a liability, however. Anyway, somehow beating the stuffing out of Kengo, rather than being the horrible last resort that it seemed to be when Kengo’s sister was possessed a couple of episodes ago, is the answer to freeing Kengo from the kokuchi - and they let Kengo join their little group. God knows why when he’s useless, but at least his presence brought back the ridiculous gay innuendo that was sorely lacking in the last episode.
And why does Aya have to have a pink nemesis? It reminds me a little of Nabari no Ou in that the female supporting characters seem to always have their own personal villain to defeat so that they don’t have to worry about the boys dealing with the real problems. Ridiculous gender politics aside, I’m hopeful that the fluffy gothic lolita will provide more unintentional hilarity rather than just being annoying and squeaky.
Posted in Monochrome Factor | No Comments »
